Tag Archives: People

India is moving towards a mobile enterprise.Here is an interesting infographic on the rapidly increasing smartphone users and predicting the growth for enterprise mobility in 2015.

- 2/3 mobile workforce to own a smart mobile device by 2015
- 205 million enterprise mobile workforce by 2015
- The penetration of smart mobile devices stands at 43.6% in 2013 and promises to grow up to 64% by 2015.

71% of Indians live in rural areas compared to only 20% Americans live in rural. There are many more interesting numbers, which explains the penetration and usage patterns of Internet in India. Despite of struggling with many issues, Indiaâ€™s contribution towards to better tomorrow is growing very fast. With the lack of proper government policies and the corruption, penetration rate of Internet through broadband lines is quite slow but as India has 71% of mobile penetration and with the introduction of 3G, number of people having access to Internet is growing. One of the interesting fact is 59% of Internet users in India use Internet via their mobile phones.

MobilityInfographic

Currently broadband internet charges in India are bit high. Once the prices comes down, the usage of Internet will grow more exponentially. What do you think about the technology trends in India? Let us know in the comments below.

Even so, the online advertising market in India is only worth $200 million of the $80 billion global market, with Googleâ€™s share of $100 million being an almost negligible percentage of its worldwide revenue of $29.3 billion dollars last year. Most Indian advertisers continue to pour billions of dollars in traditional newspaper and television advertising, online ads in India seems to be slowly becoming Mainstream, and with Mobile coming of Age across Countries and India, It is one of the Fastest growing sweet spot for Digital Advertisers as Web-enabled phone less than about $80. Good smartphones cost at least $140. Google has been working closely with manufacturers to bring out low-cost phones in India that use its Android operating system.

According to research by ViziSense, Google Search is used by 65 million Internet users in India and YouTube by 23 million. India is among the top nations by number of users on Google+, with 3 million Indians already having signed up for the new social network. Orkut, the companyâ€™s other social network, continues to be used by 11.1 million Indian users, though the service is in decline. Facebook, by comparison, boasts of 42.7 million users in India

Even e-commerce, which has seen a significant boom in the country in recent times, is in its nascent stages yet, with online ticket sales bringing in $5 billion annually, which is only a small amount compared to the $80 billion market for ticket sales in neighbouring China.

According to a recent report, shared by ASSOCHAM( associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry ), estimated the online retail industry to touch Rs 7,000 crore (1 bIllion USD) by 2015 (rising from the current Rs 2000 crore), with an annual growth rate of 35 per cent. Adding on to this, IAMI has facilitated data to indicate a zoom in Indiaâ€™s e-commerce sector, with transactions rising 50 per cent annually. Online retailing or e-tailing, which accounts for about 6 per cent of the Rs 46,000 crore industry, has taken the forefront of this rapid growth.

Although The U.S. is the largest e-commerce economy but does not lead in every single metric, Forrester says. According to Internet Retailer, The U.S. has the benefit of a large online population, a high percentage of online buyers and high per-capita online spending. However, South Korean consumers, for example, spend more time online and China has the most online users in the world, the report finds.

China and India are adopting e-commerce at very different rates. Both countries have populations of more than 1 billion people, significant emerging middle classes and rapidly growing Internet populations, which is why they are often brought up in tandem as key emerging e-commerce markets,

Internet Retailer in a post on ” The State Of eCommerce in Emerging Countries notes that India and China , these two markets differ significantly when it comes to Internet adoption and e-commerce. Indiaâ€™s online population is only about one-quarter the size of Chinaâ€™s, and some 37% of online users in China`s large urban areas are buying online, compared with only 7% in India`s large urban areas, the report says.

Dr. (Prof.) Ricardo Lim, Dean, Asian Insitute of Management , Manila, Philipines addresses graduating managenent students at IIT Delhi over web-link. Following is the transcript of his inspiring speech. June 22, 2013

Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me? Please wave if you can hear me.
To the Honorable Secretary, Mr. Pankaj Agrawala,
To the Professors and teachers of IIT-Delhi,
And most special today: to you graduating students, your families, and Guests.
Good evening from Manila.

Thank you for inviting me. IIT-Delhi is a most respected institution, and Indians (sincerely) are my most respected kind of people. From my 20 years experience at AIM our Indian students have been eloquent, assertive, and surely among the most perceptive of my students, bar none.

I presume many of you here have had careers in technology. I identify with you: I myself am an IT guy. We technologists, you and I, tend to live in a clean, black and white world: in this world bits are on or off, engines run or donâ€™t, bridges stay or fall with precise explanation. But like many of you today, I switched from technology to management, a necessary next step in a technical personâ€™s journey. We have to do it, to go up the ranks. And like me, you will learn quickly that managing people, unlike machines, is anything but black and white. You come into grey, where people mean yes even if they say no. Where people half run and half donâ€™t run (this is possible), and peopleâ€™s explanations expectations are never precise.
It is a necessary journey for all techies to go to management, because our logical reasoning and rigorous training help us cope with a complex, vague world that is becoming greyer as we speak.
I understand you learned about creativity and innovation. Certainly Creativity & Innovation are key to managing the greyness, keeping ahead of the pack, especially in a intimidating market like Indiaâ€”imagine, a market of 1.4 billion people? If I told you 20 years ago, that each of your billion and a half people were all potential buyers of mobile phones, computers, and cars, you would have laughed at me. If I told you twenty years ago that a skinny 16-year-old named Sachin Tendulkar would own all the cricket records and ten Ferraris, you would have died laughing, too.
Today that is a reality. Anyone can afford a smart phone now. There are $ 20 Raspberry Pis. The Tata Nano! You would have laughed at me, truly, if I said these things 20 years ago.
But beyond one lakh cars Indians must innovate furtherâ€”for your govt services to get better, for your rural poor to catch up with the urban, for food to be distributed faster and cheaper, for kids to be educated in quality ways.
You donâ€™t have to go far to get the best book today on innovation. It is by Indians. That book of course is Jugaad: it is a well-written, practical manual on how you can innovate for your organizations. I wonâ€™t repeat its lessons, because you should read it yourself.
What I can contribute to you, to you graduates todayâ€” what I can contribute are four words for your own personal journey on innovation and creativity.

I choose four simple words for your journey. They are: failure, reinvention, truth, and wisdom.
First, failure. You must learn to experience failure, and embrace failure. Failure is a great teacher. Failure indicates than you are trying things, rather than playing it safe. At IDEO in California, the famous design firm, they have a motto: fail often to succeed sooner. This is now the mantra of lean start-ups and extreme programming, rapid prototyping.
Failure could comes from ignorance. But know that the out-of-the-box economist Albert Hirschman felt that creativity is the brainchild of ignorance. The trick, he says, is not to plan too much, to take chances, to venture into uncharted waters. Do not worry about thinking everything through.

Not thinking is anathema to us technologists: sometimes we are smart–perhaps too smart–and we scare ourselves into not doing things, because the things are too risky or too inefficient or â€œimpossible.â€ Hirschman says that even when projects go awry, once faced with an imperfect plan and crisis, creativity and innovation occur. Better solutions emerge. Therefore here I say you must do the opposite of thinking: dare to do things that you have not done before. Risk failure, and if you fail, great! Your natural Creativity & Innovation will come out: you will learn to work around the problem.

My second lesson is reinvention. At 28 I got my MBA and moved from tech to management. At 31 I quit to become a teacher. At 37 I took my PhD. At 43 I became an administrator. At 51, I became the head of AIM. Two years from now? Another job? Another degree? I donâ€™t know. Am I flaky? Yes, for my fatherâ€™s generation. But for my and your and your childrenâ€™s gen? Not at all. Reinvention will be regular. Look around at your 8â€“year-old cousin. In less than ten years that cousin will be more well-versed than you in some new technology, more adept at understanding a new language, more proficient with new concepts. He or she is your competition. This is why I say to my AIM students, after each five years of your life, reinvent yourself. This means, do something you never did before. Take up ballroom dancing. Learn French. Write a book. Get a new degree. Take singing lessons. Get a new degree. Take a new job. Move to a new country. With reinvention, you will find yourself a better person. To be innovative, you keep moving.

The third word I give you is truth. There is absolute truth. The problem is that it is very hard to get to the truth, because it is hidden under layers of information and myth and pasts and futures. If you are willing to ask questions, then you can unpeel these layers and go deeper, though you never quite get to the truth.

What was â€œtruth:â€ 30-20-5 years ago may no longer be. For ex in early atomic physics, Electrons and protons were thought to be the most fundamental building blocks. Then by questions and unpeeling, they discovered the neutron. Then after a few more questions, the positron. Quarks and mesons and charmed spins, partons. And recently, the Higgs Boson, the God Particle. Layers, and we may not be done yet.
Itâ€™s the same for management as it is for physics. You might have laughed if 30 years ago I told you that an Indian woman would head Pepsi. Or that 1/3 of all techies in Silicon Valley would be Indian.

This is the dynamic state, that truth is hidden by layers. So therefore, when evaluating information or data, know that the truth is somewhere deeper in the layers. Youâ€™ve got to keep asking questions. No one has an absolute monopoly on the truth. Especially not you. Creativity and innovation come from knowing that you must keep asking questions and better questions in order to get to the deeper truth, but never finally.

Fourth, and final and most important: you ought to build wisdom. But what is wisdom? Knowing the truth? We already said that truth is in layers, and you may forever unpeel and not get to it. Is wisdom making the right decisions all the time? Far from itâ€”we are human and we will continue to make mistakes.

Rather, wisdom is that state of knowing that you do not know anything. Put another way, wisdom is knowing the things you do not know. Logically, then, this means that you must be open to new ideas. You must be open to the idea that other people know more than you. Logically, then, to be open, also means you need to be humble to accept that you do not know it all. Humility comes hard, especially to educated techies. To be innovative, you must be humble.

In the end, like truth, you cannot ever claim to be terminally wise, despite feeling that you are wise. Isnâ€™t that ironic? Rather, you must have eternal openness and eternal humility, that you can never be quite wise, in order to continue to be innovative.

Wisdom means that when possible, you rely on other people to give you the best advice. You cannot create by yourself. After you have reinventesd yourself, and when you have decided you can never get to the truth, and when you know you can never can become terminally wise, you go back to step 1. Oops, failure! And you start over again.

So there it is. Failure. Reinvention. Truth. Wisdom. A repeating cycle. Those are the words to keep if you want to be creative and innovative.

Better still, use those words in your love life, your home life. And what is nice is you can apply these four things equally to your relationships with your children, and spouse. – Failure. Reinvention. Truth. Wisdom. Those are the words to keep if you want to be happy with yourself.
Thank you for listening to me. I want to congratulate you on the hard work you have done. I wish you a colorful, creative, and innovative life to come. All the best, thank you, and good night.

Prof. Ricardo A. Lim is Dean of The Asian Institute of Management, Philippines. He is a faculty in innovation, marketing, operations, and quantitative analysis. Currently, the Chairperson of the Philippine Academy of Management, he is active in consulting and research. Prof. Lim received his Ph.D in Business Administration from the Marshall School at the University of Southern California and his MBA from the Darden School, University of Virginia.

My love for entrepreneurship started at a very young age… from the age of 5 running lemonade stands, to having a newspaper routes (gotta â€˜THANKâ€ my Mom for helping me here!), to making up price lists for different chores and going up & down the street pitching my services to my neighbors, to being the first to jump into raising money for a school fundraiser… I have always loved taking initiative.

Upon graduating high school, I knew I wanted to study business at University because I used to think, “everything is a business and so I’ll study business, and then I have tons of options!” I then completed my Bachelor of Commerce in Entrepreneurial Management from Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

That was in 2009… fast forward to 2013… my life and view on life has completely changed.

To keep a long story short… I went from feeling like I was chained to a 9-5 desk job living an unhealthy lifestyle… to making many SIGNIFICANT HUGE changes… to now living and loving life with the man of my dreams & growing 3 profitable businesses, which are all based around our shared passions.

Pwef!

Iâ€™ve also learned that â€œeverything is NOT a business,â€ â€¦ â€œeverything is PERSONAL.â€On my journey so far, I have also discovered a key term that has changed my view of business forever.

This term is BE-IS-NESS.

“What is a be-is-ness”?

I call all three of these businesses… my BE-IS-NESS.Â They arenâ€™t separate. Itâ€™s a WHOLE.

So, what is it?

What’s your BE-IS-NESS?

It’s who you are BE-ing… it’s your Is-Ness.

Your Be-Is-Ness.

When you are running a business, it IS who are BE-ing in the world. It reflects your “Is-Ness.”

It’s not just about the bottom line, or about profit, and itâ€™s more much more even than blanketing what youâ€™re doing under â€˜social entrepreneurship.â€™

As you probably now, itâ€™s never smart to do anything solely for financial gain. Even our man, Russell Simmons, who is the third richest figure in hip hop, having a net-worth estimate of $340 million as of April 2011 says in his book, â€œSuper Richâ€ (which I highly recommend!) that as soon as he smells or senses that a potential new business partner is only it in for the money, he walks the other way.

Being profitable is important, but you should not be doing what you’re doing, “just to make money.” … Where’s the love?

Build a sustainable business by having a positive impact on others and down the line, the more profitable you become, the more you can grow, give back, and impact the world.

Make a Difference. Make a Dollar.

Make a Dollar. Make a Difference.

Do well, and do good at the same time.

Follow what you’re really passionate about… profit WILL follow.

Or as Russell says, â€œOnly do sh*t you believe in!â€

It might take you a couple years to begin to break even and make a profit, but this is for almost every business. It will take up to 5 years to have your foundation laid.

And I’m right there with you. I’m learning, too. I’m a few years in, and I can tell you that you must have GUMPTION.

What is GUMPTION, exactly?

It’s shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness.

INITIATIVE.

More on GUMPTION and the 4 major lessons that I have learned when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur.

In closing, I encourage you to sit down, think about, and feel around what youâ€™re â€˜BE-IS-NESSâ€™ isâ€¦ Whatâ€™s your â€˜is-ness? Who are you BE-IS-ing? Who do you really want to be? The answer is most likely, â€œI just want to be my Self! My truest, highest, best Self.â€ â€¦ Through this comes your BE-IS-NESS.

Until next timeâ€¦

Much Love,

Lara
Laraâ€™s Bio
Lara loves India, and she loves entrepreneurship, which is why sheâ€™s our main contributing writer from Canada! Sheâ€™s an entrepreneur growing businesses around her passions of yoga, natural healing, music, and she also has a business consulting practice. She and her partner Kevin are Tantra Yoga Teachers as well as Laughter Yoga Leaders. Itâ€™s their mission to help people not only â€˜look on the Brightside,â€™ but feel BRIGHT, too, through BrightSideYoga.com. Ultimately, Lara is about helping people remember their true natureâ€¦ LOVE.Â She contributes articles that are both entrepreneurial and personal in nature helping you discover more of your Self and grow more in your life and business.

I know a lot of people are asking and I also know a lot of people are answering with definitions, concepts, opinions etc. As a freelancer, I believe that entrepreneurship is a life style, therefore each and every single one of us can be an entrepreneur. And this life style is based on conscious choices of making this world a better place, give to others and yes, making some money in the process.
How do we recognize an entrepreneur?
He runs a company? He has a certain number of employees? He makes a certain amount of profit? â€¦ may be or may be not, I think that what matters here is that an entrepreneur is a designer, a designer of his own lifestyle.
He is a human being like everyone else, emotional, spiritual, thoughtful and active. And his actions are based on his values. And he knows what his values are because he is aware of what he wants to build and what he wants to become. And when that happens, when actions get aligned with values, then motivation arises, motivation to get out of bed in the morning and know that he has a purpose to follow.
An entrepreneur challenges the system to create a change, builds his own rules and follows them, believes in himself and in the people around him, he is strong as a pillar and in flow like water; he is the one giving the first step.
An entrepreneur knows and respects the importance of failure, and he fails greatly, and he learns with it, and works hard, and fails once more and stands up again and work even harder, because at the next step success will rise, and he will know it when he tastes it.
An entrepreneur values, believes, feels and acts for his purpose; he will be open to feedback, but never lose his authenticity.
An entrepreneur is the CEO and the house maid in the same time.
Are you ready to become one?
Until next timeâ€¦

Much Love,
Amalia

Amaliaâ€™s Bio

Amalia loves India, and she loves entrepreneurship, which is why sheâ€™s our main contributing writer from Portugal! She considers herself a global citizen. Born and raised on the shores of the Danube in Romania and hosted by the power of the Atlantic in Portugal, for the last 5 years. She has tried most of the areas that her economic background recommended her for, like: banking, project management, marketing and finance, but her passion for people was not being expressed in any of them. Coaching came to give a name to what she was already doing but without knowing it, and it freed her from the system, where she was not fitting. Since she took this path, she is constantly designing her life and herself along with it. She expresses her passion for people and uses it as a catalyst. She is making this world a better place with each step she takes.

A genius is a symbol of the collective future intelligence of humanity. He sees what the humanity of his time does not see. He is ahead of the time and is perhaps looking at life, perception of reality, existence, God, problems of our times; beyond the filters of the mind. He is able to see what the others cannot and realizing that he keeps going about his life for the greater good of humanity. He has perhaps realized that it is possible to envision without being trapped by the perceptive constraint of time. He lives in the now and increases his awareness with every passing moment, which means he becomes more wise, intelligent and aware as he moves on in his life. He also has a sixth sense or a powerful intuition and this comes naturally to him. He has learnt how to use his increasing awareness and intuition for the benefit of the world. He loves the world as it is but makes efforts to make it better with his gifts. He takes this as a responsibility and not a burden and this continues to inspire him to keep going without any expectation of a reward or recognition. If they come along the way, he will take it in his stride with gratitude and become even more responsible for doing even greater work in his life.

His love for nature and humanity transcends beyond self and just humans. He is in harmony with himself, his species and the nature. He sees his primary purpose to understand the most existential questions regarding life and makes efforts to move humanity to a higher level where humanity as a whole will be closer to getting those answers. He recognizes this as his part of sharing the collective responsibility, to take humanity along with him towards a higher understanding of life. He has a strong connection with the global consciousness and as he goes about his life, more and more neural, social and technological systems begin to resonate with his sense of purpose, life and what we are here to do.

The power of his imagination goes beyond the world we know, understand or can comprehend. It transcends materialism, time and space. This gives him the ability to look at the existing world and humanity as a whole, beyond religion, politics, science, economics and other believe systems that humans have created. He chooses to focus his life on the area of his calling and his work comes to him as a form of meditation and utter joy. He knows that he can create the future and his role is to continue making contributions from his side and leave the rest. He realizes that unconditional love is the strongest force and energy in the world and has the power to resolve all the negatives that the humanity faces. A genius chooses to make his contribution to the world and humanity through his actions in the area he knows is his calling and strives to take himself and the humanity with him to a higher level during his current form of life he understands or till his material death.